The NFL has yet to announce the winner of the 2023 Comeback Player of the Year award. But another outlet consisting of NFL players apparently chose their own award winner – and it wasn’t Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin.
On Thursday, The Sporting News announced that Tua Tagovailoa had been named the Comeback Player of the Year through a vote of his peers and players around the NFL. Tua won the award by a pretty sizeable margin percentage-wise.
“Tagovailoa tallied 37.3 percent of the vote from around the league in a tightly contested race. Both Hamlin (25.6 percent) and Mayfield (14.9 percent) also garnered considerable support league-wide. Meanwhile, Flacco (1.2 percent) had a solid write-in campaign despite not being included on the initial ballots, which began circulating to NFL teams before he made his first start,” the outlet wrote.
“Tagovailoa’s victory is indicative of the effort he put in to overcome an injury-riddled 2022 and post high-end passing numbers while leading Miami back to the postseason.”
Comeback Player of the Year: Tua Tagovailoa, Dolphins 🐬
SN’s 2023 race for CPOY was one of the closest and most wide-open in recent history. Here’s why Tua was the choice 👇https://t.co/zPqtbRGx3W pic.twitter.com/zRnEq7BUB2
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) February 1, 2024
Tua Tagovailoa is currently a finalist for the Associated Press’s Comeback Player of the Year Award, which the NFL considers to be the official version of the award.
However, Hamlin is still widely seen as the favorite due to the circumstances of last year. Going from nearly dying to returning to the field in the span of less than a year certainly hits differently for some.
But as we’ve seen in the past, the award doesn’t always go to the player who fell the hardest and came back, but rather how far they’ve climbed.
Will Tua Tagovailoa win the official Comeback Player of the Year award, or will someone else win it?